A Working Man, At Long Last

Well, I've begun that job dealing cards. I seems like it should work out just fine to me. I've dealt in two tournaments so far, both being $500 freerolls. Each time, I was one of the last dealers cut, and last night, as I left, one of my bosses told me that he liked my style of dealing and that they wanted me to work a lot. This works just fine for me, especially since the tips have been ok so far, and only stand to get better. I made $20 in 4 hours for the first tournament, and $30 in 5 hours during the second, and the customers haven't even been conditioned to tip yet, so only a few people really tipped much.

Just thought I'd update y'all.

Also, I just started to read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Has anyone else read it?

Until next time, Cheers!

Job update and such

I don't have much to talk about at the moment, so I'll just update everyone on my job situation. I had an interview on Friday with a big consulting firm with a local office. It went well. I would be taking groundwater samples from oil facilities. I'm going to call tomorrow with a question or two and see how the hiring process is coming along.

I had a second interview with a company that is opening a card room in town. I'd be dealing more Texas Hold'em. I got the job. Surprise surprise. We'll see how it goes. I start on Saturday.

Also, happy birthday Elizabeth!

Cheers all.

*bang* *bangbang*

I just read a story about Wafaa Bilal. He's an Iraqi-American artist who has locked himself in an art gallery for the entire month of May 2007. With his living room and a paintball gun and a pair of goggles.

A paintball gun, you ask? Actually, it's a very smart paintball gun. It is hooked up to the Internet and anyone can log on, aim, and fire the gun. During the first 13 days, according to the article, over 6,500 shots have been taken and Wafaa has lost count of the number of times that he has been hit. Several times in the head.

If you feel like shooting at him, you can go to his website. Every day or so, he posts videos on YouTube. Here is the newest video as of this blog post. Day 12.

Have you ever been hit by a paintball? I have, and I can tell you that it doesn't feel very good. I can't imagine being bombarded by paintballs at any time. I guess he is lucky, in that the gun is mounted such that it can only swivel to the left and right, so they can't aim at him while he's in bed trying to get some sleep. I just looked at the website and it looks like he now has a Plexiglas shield that he can put in front of his computer desk while he's there. I'd say this seems pretty fair to me, as while he is sitting in his computer chair, the line of fire passes right through his head.

I wonder if he knew what he was getting himself into when he decided to do it. My guess is no. I saw a video from Day 5, I think and he seemed pretty well spent, emotionally. But by the Day 12 video he seems to have pulled himself together again.

I'm sure there are people who sit at their computers for hours at a time shooting over and over again, getting some sadistic pleasure out of trying to cause another person, whom they have likely never met, physical pain, without suffering any consequences.

That just doesn't do it for me, but hey, that's me.

There are a lot of evil people in the world. I can just see GW sitting late at night when he shouldn't be able to sleep, taking potshots at his own little Iraqi 'prisoner.'

Anyway, here's to Wafaa. I'll bet he's looking forward to that day in June when he gets to say goodbye to his little yellow prison forever. And I also bet he'll never be able to hear a paintball gun being fired (or anything that makes a similar sound, for that matter) without cringing and unconsciously brushing at his remembered bruises.

Hamilton Mountain

I went hiking on Monday. My friend, Nick, called me after lunch and asked if I wanted to go to Hamilton Mountain, for a hike. I said that I would definitely be up for that, so off we went. Hamilton Mountain is in Beacon Rock State Park, in Washington. I wish I had brought my camera, because it was a nice hike. Maybe next time. But yeah, the hike was nice. We didn't go all the way to the top because Nick was just getting over a cold, but we went to the top of what I believe is known as "middle Hamilton," sort of a lower peak. From it, you had a nice view of Beacon Rock, and the Bonneville Dam. It was also the right time of year to see all sorts of wildflowers. To name a few, Indian Paintbrush, Upland Larkspur, and wild strawberries. Unfortunately, I didn't get to enjoy the hike back down very much because my knee started to hurt, and I had to go to the bathroom, but enough said about that. I would definitely recommend it if you find yourself in the area with a few hours to kill. If you don't have time for the Hamilton hike, you can always just climb Beacon Rock.

Numbers Law

Guess I took a little blogging vacation there. Either that, or I just didn't have a very exciting week.

In any case, I just found an article on Digg that I thought I'd share with you. You can check it out right here.

Apparently, many sets of numbers follow Benford's Logarithmic Law. The gist is that more numbers start with 1 than 2, more with 2 than 3, more with 3 than 4, and so on, right down to 9, which has the fewest number of representatives. And these ratios are predicted by Benford's Law. Weird, huh? What sorts of sets of numbers follow this law? All kinds of them, apparently. They start out talking about house numbers. Also included are birth rates, census numbers, the area of countries and many others. Who would have thought?

Want to know how two researchers discovered this independently of each other? They noticed that books of logarithmic tables in the libraries that they frequented were more worn at the beginning, where the smaller numbers come into play.

Crazy, huh?

Why this happens has yet to be explained.

Best Birthday Present Ever

Well, perhaps I overstated it a bit. But today, May 5, 2007 turns out to be Free Comic Book Day. I had seen ads for this for quite some time, but almost forgot. Luckily, I decided to stop at the library. I checked out a CD by the Gerry Mulligan quartet, as the name struck a memory with me. I believe someone who may sometimes go by the name of clovis recommended him to me quite some time ago. Anyway, they had a sign reminding everyone of Free Comic Book Day. Luckily, there's a comic book shop quite close to the library and I headed straight there. Imagine my surprise that they actually had someone there signing the free comic books. His name is Matt Camp and he did some of the art in the comic book that they were handing out. I told him that it was my birthday and he happily signed it "Happy birthday Eric! Matt Camp." This definitely made me smile.

Drinkin' Time

Wow.

You have to see this.

Can you imagine what the people in the tour group must have thought about Dartmouth after going through this?

And yes, Keggy is a (semi-)official mascot at Dartmouth. I saw him once or twice at football games during my senior year. It's good to know he's still around.

In other news, Happy Birthday to me.

Mesquite Chicken Burritos

Well, I make pretty much every meal that I eat myself, as some of you know. Usually, they're pretty boring things, like spaghetti or grilled cheese and soup. But today, I went for something a little different. Sometimes I make burritos. For the last few days, I've been feeling the need to use up some of the frozen chicken breasts that I bought a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to make some chicken burritos for lunch. I also found a packet of Grill Creations Mesquite meat marinade that I bought a while back for some unknown reason. I decided that this might make for a good burrito, and I was right. Here is my recipe.

Ingredients:
2 boneless chicken breasts
1 1/2 cups rice (uncooked)
1 can corn (drained)
1 can black beans (drained)
1 can refried beans
1 packet Grill Creations Mesquite Marinade
cheese
salsa
tortillas

Directions:
-First, I cut up the chicken into bite sized pieces

-Then, I started the rice (I used the kind that takes 20 mins to cook. If you use instant, I guess you could cook the rice later, if you want.)

-Cook the chicken using some butter or oil or whatever. When it is pretty much done, add the marinade mix, along with a little water. Cook for a while longer until a good portion of the water has boiled away

-Then, add the black beans, refried beans, and corn to the chicken and cook some more, stirring.

-Once the rice is done, pour in the chicken/beans/corn and stir it up.

-Put some of this on a tortilla with some cheese and salsa and enjoy

This made way more than I could eat (filled 12 soft taco size flour tortillas), so be prepared to save some for later. I put the rest into tortillas (without salsa and cheese) and put some in the refrigerator and some in the freezer for later. I'll top them with cheese and salsa and bake them. They should be pretty good.

The burritos turned out really well, in my opinion. I would definitely say it's worth trying. Much better than results I've had using burrito mix.

Goodbye Old Friend

Well, I sold my car today. My beautiful malachite green 1990 Saab 900S. It took me to Dartmouth and back many times and brought me across the country to Portland (via Fort Collins, Lake Havasu, San Francisco, Eureka, and the Oregon coast).

I had a lot of memories in that car and now it is gone. I'm sure some of you have memories in that car, too. One of these days, I'll bother to set up the pictures stuff so I can put up a few pictures in times like these. Feel free to comment about your favorite memory of the Saab (or even one of the other ones that I've had the privilege of driving throughout the years, I guess).

I hope your new owner treats you well. Sorry I couldn't fix you up and keep you with me.

Goodbye.